Deadly carrot
Thapsia villosa
Family · Apiaceae · Can kill
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The big yellow-umbelled plant that rises in southern scrub in June, often mistaken for fennel or wild carrot. The sap raises blisters on skin, and the English name says the rest: deadly carrot.
Scrubland · Roadsides and waste ground · Montado · Uplands
Also known asvillous thapsia, false fennel
How to tell it
Yellow umbels, not white, which already separates it from most. Large divided leaves covered in short hairs you feel with a hand. A thick grooved stem that stands dead all summer. Cut, the root bleeds a brownish latex.
What it is confused with
Fennel
Foeniculum vulgare
Both large with yellow umbels. Fennel smells intensely of aniseed and has smooth, thread-fine leaves; deadly carrot has no aniseed smell, broader hairy leaves, and a rough stem. If it does not smell of aniseed, it is not fennel.
Giant fennel
Ferula communis
Both are large, yellow and toxic, and grow side by side. Giant fennel is much bigger, with a wrist-thick stem and smooth leaves; deadly carrot is smaller and hairy. Neither is handled without gloves.
What it is for
None
It was used as a blistering agent in veterinary and ancient medicine, precisely because it burns: it was applied to raise blisters on purpose. Cutting the plant without gloves is enough to lift skin on sensitive people.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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